New Delhi: A day after a high-level meeting with Congress’ chief Sonia Gandhi, party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, speculations are on the rife that ex-poll strategist Prashant Kishor is given an offer to join the party in a top-rung post, reports said.
Touted to be about the ensuing general elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, the meeting at Rahul’s residence was said to be about the Gandhis offering Kishor a ‘significant position’ in the party, NDTV reported quoting sources.
He is known to have been given three days by the party leadership to decide on the same.
Reports had earlier linked the Kishor-Gandhis’ meet to the Congress turmoil in Punjab, where the party is struggling to broker peace between its top two leaders – Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and his rival Navjot Singh Sidhu – ahead of next year’s state polls.
Earlier last month, Kishor had two high-profile meetings with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar where talks of a combined opposition strategy to take on the BJP in 2024 took place.
Kishore’s role has been transformative in several parties’ victories in their respective states. In May, he added Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) wins into his impressive portfolio of election strategy. However, a day after the results, he said that he was “quitting the space”.
Previous stint as politician
Currently, Prashant Kishor holds almost a cabinet rank in the place of Punjab chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh’s principal adviser.
Previously, Kishore donned a political hat when he joined the JD(U) and was elevated to the party’s Vice President post, before being kicked out by party chief Nitish Kumar after a fallout.
Kishor on Congress
It is noteworthy that one of the rare blots in Kishor’s career was the Uttar Pradesh elections in 2017, where his famed campaign strategy failed to help the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance come to power. In May, Kishor remarked that Congress is a “100-year-old political party and they have their ways of functioning”.
Kishor had also suggested that “the Congress must introspect where it is going wrong”.